Acala's DOT Bridge

Background

As the DeFi Hub of Polkadot, Acala is building financial infrastructures and an ecosystem around DOT. Acala has been taking a phased launch approach to account for any technical dependencies on Polkadot.

One of these dependencies is the XCM Bridge Infrastructure, a component of the Polkadot ecosystem that enables Cross-Consensus Communication between parachains. While the development of XCM is near completion, it’s expected that it will take an indeterminate amount of time to appropriately test and deploy for the broader ecosystem.

To provide an answer to the desire from the community for DOT liquidity on Acala, we are pleased to announce an interim non-custodial bridge solution to support DOT transfers to Acala, endorsed by Parity. While it is a limited one-direction DOT bridge that enables transferring DOT from Polkadot to Acala, once XCM is available on Polkadot, it will be seamlessly upgraded to use XCM with no migration required for DOT holders.

Note: Regarding DOT withdrawal from Acala, please refer to Exchange Withdraw/Deposit.

What is the Acala's DOT Bridge

The DOT bridge is Acala's solution which:

• is a non-custodial bridge DOT from Polkadot to Acala

• enables a path for users with DOT to participate in Acala's DeFi economy

• is seamlessly upgradeable to Polkadot's XCM when it becomes available. No migration or extra actions required for DOT holders.

Before you start

You should be aware of some limitations in using Acala's DOT Bridge:

• bringing DOT from Polkadot to Acala is one-way, currently there is no way to bridge the DOT back - until Polkadot's XCM mentioned above becomes available, or until direct DOT withdraw and deposit from/to Exchanges become available

• it only works for DOT, not any other tokens or assets

• DOT transfers over 5,000 DOT will require approval as an extra security protection, which will take up to 24 hours to process

How to use the Bridge?

If you read the above and would like to action, welcome to the Acala world! You will find a step by step guide here.